Still riding. Still writing. Still wondering.

work

I want to write
Not to have written.
Better to bite
Than to get bitten.
Forget I ran:
See how I run;
What counts is can
Not could have done.
It’s about the ride
Not where you’ve ridden;
When you’ve nothing to hide
Nothing gets hidden.

For all I’ve seen,
What am I seeing?
So much I’ve been
What am I being?
The one who makes
Or one who made
Wrong calls, mistakes
A mark, the grade?
Time to look ahead
Not back, because
The older I get
The better I was.

Needless to say, this is not my real handwriting, which is as wayward as a shopping cart with three wheels, and harder to decipher than the Engima code. But I am a true believer in the power of ink on paper, and everything I post here starts out that way. To me, it’s important that in this virtual, digital age, writing remains a physical action, and that poems are truly created and take tangible form – even if only to feel like I’m actually doing something! . N.

They put Dad out to grass when he was only fifty-three;
Looks like the world is getting set to do the same to me.
Different situations, generations and times;
But it wasn’t his fault then; and sure as hell it won’t be mine.

He wasn’t digging coal or building cars or welding steel;
Don’t matter that your collar’s white: the pain’s the same, and real.
Another blameless victim of the corporate machine
When some new broom blows through the door and sweeps the whole place clean.

I kept my independence, fought to follow my own track;
No status, no security; no one ever had my back.
I sweated through the hard times, found the means to make it pay;
Now our so-called leaders seem hellbent on taking it away.

Our country’s on the edge; and when it goes down, so will I.
All I’ve built reduced to ashes in the blinking of an eye.
With you beside me, maybe I can find a different fate.
But I’m scared, my heart is heavy. And the hour grows late.

There are no tools or instruments,
No workbench, no materials.
No ringing hammers, rasping saws,
No hard blue flame, no rain of sparks;
No brick or plank, stone or cement,
No rivet, bolt or sheet of steel,
No whirling lathe, no shrieking drill,
No oil or smoke, no soil or dust.
But still, tonight we will depart
Contented with the work we’ve done;
No sign of how we spent the day
Or what it was we went to build.